Skullduggery

April 18, 2014

We tend to moralize casually on the walk to dinner, and we’re all the more biting for it. “There’s something tragic in it, really…” a friend offered, trailing off. She spoke softly to me, but also to them, the “bright and tight,” as they stumbled back to campus on our narrow shared way.

It is 6 p.m. and I’m sitting with hundreds of fellow equine fanatics in a stadium flanked for miles on either side by farmhouses, wooden fence lines and flat, sandy fields speckled with horses. Many around me wear baseball caps to keep the sinking Florida sun out of their faces; a few had the foresight to bring a blanket for the inevitable temperature drop later tonight, when the stadium will be lit by giant electric flood lights.

Last June, working at the Rare Books and Special Collections Department hidden within Firestone, I found myself tearing up as I sifted through pages just shy of 150 years old. I had been processing the Civil War Letters of Adam Badeau for nearly a month, my longest and most meticulous project to date.

The Ivy membership has gathered in the library. One by one, they choose who will fill the positions on the club’s officer board: they elect a male president, a male vice-president, a female bicker chair, and a male social chair. One more position remains: house manager.

“Always be happy, never be content.” Etched in pavement just a few steps from my dorm, the inscription never fails to draw my attention. I’ve always read it as a testament to Princeton’s hard-driving academic ethos: a reminder to students to always keep striving, never to cease pushing themselves to achieve.

I noticed that Stefan talked quite a bit about balancing things. Before you find an optimal outcome, you must first find if your equation is balanced (or something like that). I pictured Stefan looking into his closet that morning. He selects a pair of jeans and then couples it with a chambray shirt. He knows the jean on jean would create a balanced, uniform look, but is it optimal?

Verbatim

Soph 1: Was Coachella fun?
Soph 2, after long pause: I cried the entire flight back.
Soph 1: Are you going to go back?
Soph 2: I’m def going back next year...and the year after that...I think I’m just going to go until I have a baby.